Lorenzo Storioni

He was influenced by makers of the previous generations such as Giovanni Battista Guadagnini and Tommaso Balestrieri, and between 1775 and 1795 manufactured a massive number of high-quality stringed instruments in a conventional manner.

He changed the position of the F-hole, selected unusual materials (such as local wild maple), and decorated his instruments with a wide and rugged fringe, giving them strong but elegant looks as well as excellent sound.

Decades of war, reforms, and repeated conquests by the French and Austrians dismantled the social and economic structure of Cremona - as Duane Rosengard explains in a 1991 paper published in the Journal of the Violin Society of America.

[citation needed] In the 1770s, just as Storioni emerged, the guilds that had governed the skilled crafts since the Middle Ages were abolished by the conquering Austrians.

The Jesuit fathers, whose educational institutions were major patrons of the violin makers, were suppressed by the Pope; and the lay corporations, who conducted commerce on behalf of Cremona's religious orders, were abolished.